


The Curious Case of the Missing Chatwins

by sugarlessgum



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Season 1 Episode 9: The Writing Room, Welters Challenge 2019, buzzfeed unsolved au, everything is implied and not nearly as in depth as the actual episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 11:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19829197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarlessgum/pseuds/sugarlessgum
Summary: Most of the details from the case are taken from season one episodes, including the quote from "Dev Fleischman." This is set up like a true crime case from Buzzfeed Unsolved, and it's about Martin and Jane Chatwin's disappearance. I reference the abuse Martin went through, but it's mostly implied and doesn't go into nearly as much detail as the episode showed.The yellow dialogue is Penny and the blue dialogue is Quentin





	The Curious Case of the Missing Chatwins

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the details from the case are taken from season one episodes, including the quote from "Dev Fleischman." This is set up like a true crime case from Buzzfeed Unsolved, and it's about Martin and Jane Chatwin's disappearance. I reference the abuse Martin went through, but it's mostly implied and doesn't go into nearly as much detail as the episode showed.
> 
> The yellow dialogue is Penny and the blue dialogue is Quentin

Hello and welcome to another episode of Brakebills Unsolved. Today we're covering the disappearance of the Chatwin children, the neighbors of prominent author Christopher Plover.

that's the Narnia guy, right?

Fillory

whatever, same shit

it's- I know you're doing this intentionally to piss me off and it's not going to work

isn't it?

...let's get started

 _Fillory and Further_ is a series of five novels written by Christopher Plover during the Second World War. In the books, the Chatwin siblings discover a magical world called Fillory, hidden inside a clock in their aunt's house. The children were inspired by Plover's actual neighbors: Rupert Chatwin, a young soldier injured in the war, and the twins Jane and Martin. Plover had been a struggling writer for most of his career. His previous work received nothing but rejection letters. _Fillory and Further_ , however, became a cultural phenomenon.

we're talking radio plays, made-for-TV movies, conventions, thousands and thousands of fanfictions. books written roughly seventy years ago that have maintained their hold on audiences’ imaginations for literal decades.

yeah, you were way into those books, right?

oh, absolutely. when I was a kid, my friend Julia and I would pretend to be Martin and Jane Chatwin. I've got multiple copies and multiple editions of each book at home.

Jesus Christ, you are such a nerd

my point is, those books meant a lot to me when I was younger. they did for a lot of people.

The Plover estate had been in the family for at least five generations by the time the books were written. Christopher lived there with his sister Prudence, who cared for him until his death in 1952. The Chatwin family moved next door during the Second World War after the eldest child Rupert injured his leg in battle. Plover's hospitality extended beyond storytelling. He briefly took the Chatwins in the summer their mother died. Plover was well known for his generosity towards children. It's said he was even paying for the education of his housekeeper's young children.

sounds sketch. you should never be well known for something like "he really likes kids. like a lot."

yeah, it's not great

In October of 1942, Martin Chatwin went missing from his family's estate. According to reports, the children had all been home, exploring the house and planning make-believe which was a regular occurrence. Martin walked down a hallway late in the afternoon and reportedly never walked back out. The family was obviously devastated, as was Plover. To quote Dev Fleischman, author of _Fillory and Further: A Scholarly Approach,_ "This was just one of a series of powerful events that haunted Plover. It suffused his work with a sense of melancholy and loss." Barely a year later, Martin's twin sister Jane also went missing under shockingly similar circumstances. She had been last seen wandering the Chatwin estate. No one witnessed her leaving the grounds and nobody else entered the estate that day.

that's a lot of disappearing

yeah. that's part of the reason people are so obsessed with these books. you have these kids — that are based on real children — walking through clocks into other worlds. then the real children just... vanished.

Christopher Plover died of a heart attack in 1952, nearly a decade after the children's disappearance. His health had been declining for years and he'd been out of the public eye for quite some time as a result. At least, that's what we used to think. In 2015, a tour guide at the Plover estate uncovered a letter written by Prudence to the family lawyer. Plover hadn't been seen in public for several years, that's true. But according to Prudence's letter, he wasn't in a sickbed — he was missing. In her letter, she demands their lawyer obtain a death certificate for her brother. The lawyer eventually followed through and a false death certificate was issued in 1952.

that doesn't make sense. why would she lie?

rumors had been stirring up about Plover in his absence. there were these missing kids, right? kids who knew Plover. people had already started to whisper when the kids first vanished, and it only grew once Plover himself seemed to disappear. the longer they all stayed gone, the more people started making connections. so Prudence did whatever she could to protect his reputation.

And with that, let's get into the theories.

##### THEORY 1

Christopher Plover was responsible for the Chatwins' disappearance. After Jane and Martin disappeared, rumors started up about abuse and "perversions" in the Plover estate. While the authorities never considered him a serious suspect, local newspapers often suggested he may have had an inappropriate relationship with the Chatwin children. They didn't have much evidence to back up these claims at the time. It was really more for the sake of scandalous headlines. However, the same tour guide who found Prudence's letter also came across some... compromising photos of Martin Chatwin.

fuck this guy

This also wasn't the first time kids have gone missing from the Plover estate.

you remember the housekeeper's kids?

yeah

well, about two years before Martin's disappearance, the housekeeper was abruptly fired and checked into a mental hospital, paid for by Plover. no one is sure what happened to her children but they were no longer living in the estate.

The records for the housekeeper's stay in the asylum were being managed by Plover's lawyer. The same lawyer who had Plover's death certificate issued. Which brings us to our next theory.

##### THEORY 2

Prudence was actually behind the children's disappearance. Her campaign for a false death certificate shows the lengths she was willing to go to protect her brother's public image.

it's possible that if she knew about Plover's abuse she'd be willing to, you know, disappear a few kids

you think she knew?

she had to have at least suspected, right? and she spent years after his "death" preaching about what a good, honest, generous man Plover was.

the lady doth protest too much

exactly

First-hand accounts from servants at the estate also suggest that Prudence was quite the disciplinarian. She was impatient with the children who frequented her home and wasn't afraid to get heavy-handed with the housekeeper's children especially. At the very least, it's not unreasonable to think she had something to do with that incident.

that all sounds pretty reasonable

unfortunately, yes

so where is it?

what?

the crazy shit. you do this all the time. you make some really good points and get close to some actually plausible answers, then you ruin everything with some crazy shit. so what is it? alien abduction? this sounds like a good one for alien abduction.

I have no idea what you mean

uh huh

but I do have one more theory

##### THEORY 3

Jane and Martin Chatwin actually found and traveled to Fillory.

fuck you

it's- (wheeze) it's a real theory

no it's fucking not. we're not doing this.

both siblings went missing in their home-

lots of fucking kids get abducted from their homes, Quentin

-in the middle of the day with gardeners and a housekeeper and an older brother who would have noticed if they'd left the estate or if anyone else came and went

you think if the fucking gardener did it he'd admit to seeing shady shit? "no, I was in the garden all day doing garden things. never seen no kids around here."

Plover didn't just write the books to entertain the Chatwins. they were based on the quote-unquote "make-believe" games they'd tell him about.

I'm not trusting anything that motherfucker has to say

that's extremely fair

so is that it? that's the whole theory? "the books were real, they're in fairy tale land."

yeah, pretty much

I am so fucking mad at you right now

Nearly a century has passed since Martin and Jane Chatwin vanished. While we've found a significant amount of new evidence surrounding their disappearance, the case remains **unsolved.**

one thing's for sure: Plover and his sister were fucking perverts

yeah, it's... yeah. that's never something you want to hear about someone who was such an important part of your childhood. but no book or work of art will ever be worth forgiving the actions of a monster who, by the way, generations of idiots like me have been worshipping like a literary god.

weren't those books basically your entire identity?

I mean, I wouldn't go that far but they were... here's the thing. I've struggled with depression for most of my life, and I was hospitalized pretty often as a teenager.

you never told me that

the _Fillory_ books were one of the only things that got me through it. I would lie in bed and read them until I felt like me again... the idea of Fillory saved my life.

I think it's possible to appreciate what Fillory did for you, what it represents, and still condemn Plover for what he did.

absolutely. the way I think about those books will forever be changed. but that doesn't erase their role in my past... fuck Plover though.

seriously, fuck Plover


End file.
